Coach Law wants WI fielders to improve

GEORGETOWN, Guyana: After fielding lapses in the first One-day International against Bangladesh, West Indies coach Stuart Law now wants the team to lift that aspect of their game.

The Windies haven’t won a bilateral ODI series in 12 months, and qualified for the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019 after finishing second best to Afghanistan in the ICC Cricket World Cup Qualifier 2018, suggesting that all-round improvement is the need of the hour.

“There are a few areas we need to work on. The boys understand where they have fallen down and where they need to improve,” said Law ahead of the second ODI.In the first game, Tamim Iqbal was dropped early on, and went on to score 130* to lead the batting charge for Bangladesh. There were other misses on the field too, which Law said had hurt his team.

“If we hang on to our chances — if we’d hung on to our chances the other day (in the first ODI), we probably would’ve chased 220, 230,” he said.

“With their firepower down below, they can be quite dangerous in the last five to 10 overs but we’ve got to put that out of our minds. It’s hot, it’s humid, there’s potentially rain around but that’s what you get down here in Guyana.

“I thought we started well. In the first 10 overs, we had great intensity in the field, we hung on to a chance early on and the bowlers stuck to the plans really well. It’s unfortunate that we managed to create opportunities, we just couldn’t grab hold of those opportunities.”

The Windies chase of Bangladesh’s 279 was going well with Chris Gayle (40) and Shimron Hetmyer (52) taking them to 81 for 2 before Gayle’s run out set off a collapse.

“We lost too many wickets at crucial times,” Law said. “We need not only to put on partnerships but create a big partnership — you’ve got one or two big partnerships in a 50-over game so it goes well for posting a big total.”